Quick take headlines: Lies, damned lies and Las Vegas
As we heard on Olbermann this week, John Dean, Richard Nixon's famous former White House counsel, who nearly went to jail over Watergate but came out as clean and integrity-filled as the hero in the Shawshank Redemption (his FindLaw column is a must-read for all things Bush/Nixon...) will testify at tomorrow's Senate hearings on Russ Feingold's censure resolution. Before you watch, read, or re-read this, this, and this. Dean is familiar with what happens when a president tosses out the rule of law and attempts to take on the powers of dictatorship. His testimony should be good C-SPAN...
According to the invaluable Murray Waas, Karl Rove sought, starting a year before the 2004 election, to hide damning evidence that Iraq did not pose a threat to the United States, and that he and the president knew it as early as October of 2002. Reports Waas:
Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, cautioned other White House aides in the summer of 2003 that Bush's 2004 re-election prospects would be severely damaged if it was publicly disclosed that he had been personally warned that a key rationale for going to war had been challenged within the administration. Rove expressed his concerns shortly after an informal review of classified government records by then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley determined that Bush had been specifically advised that claims he later made in his 2003 State of the Union address -- that Iraq was procuring high-strength aluminum tubes to build a nuclear weapon -- might not be true, according to government records and interviews.
Hadley was particularly concerned that the public might learn of a classified one-page summary of a National Intelligence Estimate, specifically written for Bush in October 2002. The summary said that although "most agencies judge" that the aluminum tubes were "related to a uranium enrichment effort," the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Energy Department's intelligence branch "believe that the tubes more likely are intended for conventional weapons."
Waas goes on to report that while Bush's handlers were able to cry presidential ignorance on the Niger issue, in part by discrediting Joe Wilson, the aluminum tubes presented a thornier problem that could impact the election:
"Presidential knowledge was the ball game," says a former senior government official outside the White House who was personally familiar with the damage-control effort. "The mission was to insulate the president. It was about making it appear that he wasn't in the know. You could do that on Niger. You couldn't do that with the tubes." A Republican political appointee involved in the process, who thought the Bush administration had a constitutional obligation to be more open with Congress, said: "This was about getting past the election."
Most troublesome to those leading the damage-control effort was documentary evidence -- albeit in highly classified government records that they might be able to keep secret -- that the president had been advised that many in the intelligence community believed that the tubes were meant for conventional weapons.
... The one-page documents known as the "President's Summary" are distilled from the much lengthier National Intelligence Estimates, which combine the analysis of as many as six intelligence agencies regarding major national security issues. Bush's knowledge of the State and Energy departments' dissent over the tubes was disclosed in a March 4, 2006, National Journal story -- more than three years after the intelligence assessment was provided to the president, and some 16 months after the 2004 presidential election.
Shocking news? No. But it is part of the drip, drip, drip that is finally leading the journalistic community to face the obvious, particularly as various books come out sounding essentially the same theme: Bush and Co. were determined to invade Iraq, and to shield the public from the knowledge that such an invasion was unnecessary to protect America.
In Florida, Republican Attorney General Charlie Christ -- who's running for governor -- has subpoenaed documents related to the voting machines sold to Leon County, where the elections supervisor contends they can be easily hacked. The dispute has led to a showdown between the supervisor, whom the state says is in violation of the Help America Vote Act for not contracting with a voting machine provider. Bradblog does a lot of blogging on this, so that's a good place to check for more info.
And a bit further up the coast, Governor Mitt Romney says thank goodness the high court there has ensured Massachusetts won't become the "Las Vegas of gay weddings." If only the state could curtail the promulgation of presidential candidates...
<%
dim done
done = request.form("done")
if done = "" then
done = "No"
%>
Tell a friend
<%
Else
if request.form("done") = "Yes" then
'sets variables
dim email, sendmail
email = request.form("email")
Set sendmail = Server.CreateObject("CDONTS.NewMail")
'put the webmaster address here
sendmail.From = "webmaster@aspbasics.com"
'The mail is sent to the address entered in the previous page.
sendmail.To = email
'Enter the subject of your mail here
sendmail.Subject = "Check out this website"
'send a specific page or send a site url
dim url
'url = Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
url = "http://www.aspbasics.net"
'This is the content of the message.
sendmail.Body = "Site recommendation from a friend!" & _
vbCrlf & vbCrlf & "A friend has sent you this email and thought you would should check out this site." & _
vbCrlf & url & vbCrlf
'this sets mail priority.... 0=low 1=normal 2=high
sendmail.Importance = 1
sendmail.Send 'Send the email!
response.redirect Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
'Response.write ("Sent to ") & email
End if
End if
%>
"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
